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Self-Portraits, accidental, semi-accidental or vain!

Don Lashier

New member
> I'm not sure if this qualifies as a self-portrait. I set up the lighting and the pose, but hubby actually shot it.

In my book it does - you basically did everything but pull the trigger. Love it also - very thought provoking and mysterious. But this image had me twisted in incredulity for a bit until I realized that your legs are crossed :)

btw if handing off the shutterpress applies, here's one of myself (on the right) 40 years ago.

nd35455p.jpg


- DL
 
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here's a recent one

I like the weirdness of this one.

85441127.jpg


If you go to the pbase account, the EXIF that shows the picture taken at f/2.0 is clearly incorrect. f/5.6 is more likely.

scott
 

Rachel Foster

New member
Just for fun....

While I was learning to use the timer, I stepped in front of the camera. I came out blurred as the lens did not have time to refocus, but I thought it was a fun photo.

monriver015.jpg
 
Trying to figure out how my flash settings worked quickly left me without volunteers - hence the self portrait. This try was a accidental long shutter speed in combi with flash - me walking out right after the flash.

f1010005oq2.jpg
 
Here's something of a work in progress--

DGmirror2sm.jpg


Someone asked if I could take a photograph of myself in a mirror outdoors at night using a press camera and flash. This turned out to be really challenging, and for the moment I've set it aside, but I'll probably come back to it using a second camera instead of a mirror.

I wanted an urban background and spent weeks hunting around Manhattan whenever I was out and about looking for a building with a mirror at street level. Surely I've seen them everywhere, but if you actually go looking for one, you'll never find it, so I found a floor mirror that I could use for the shoot and just set it up on the terrace of my apartment building.

Meanwhile I tried some Polaroids with a full length mirror indoors.

First thing I discovered was that the flash on the camera can't provide the illumination, because it produces way too much flare. It has to be cut back to just an effect, maybe 5 stops or more under the main light--which means there has to be a main light on a stand. I only have one battery pack for my portable Normans, so I would also have to run both lights off the pack with a splitter, which is why I'm so wired up in this shot. That's the sync cord going from the shutter to the light and the heavy cord is the power cable to the flash. The battery pack is clamped to a light stand holding the main light. I want a hard look, so I'm not using any fill, other than what comes from the camera flash.

I ended up putting the main in a Norman 19" portable octabox with a silver interior without the diffuser on the front for a kind of hard Weegee look. To get the light on the camera down to this level where it doesn't completely blow out everything I wrapped the tube in two layers of paper and used a diffuser that eats up two stops. With the splitter on the pack the output is symmetrical to both tubes.

For the outdoor shoot, I tried a few different compositions. This one has some space at the top for text. I was shooting Efke PL100 and processed in Acufine for EI 200, if I remember correctly (I can look it up, if anyone really wants to know). I think I'm at f:16 here, and the lens is a Symmar 210/5.6 convertible. The camera is a Linhof Tech V.

I still needed a lot of edge burning (in PhotoShop from a neg scan in this case) to reduce the flare from the light and the hot spot on my left shoulder and upper arm, which looks fake to me.

I think I need to bring the output of the camera flash down even further to make it work. Come to think of it, I now have a Norman LH3b head that lets me dial down the power on one head (the LH2 head in the picture is controlled only by the power setting on the battery pack), which I didn't have at the time of this shoot, so that makes things easier. I also think that without a front-surface mirror the mirror glass produces too much flare, so I'm going to have to go to using a second camera to make the photograph. I'll have the second camera on bulb so I can have the lens open when I make the photograph as in this shot.
 
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Tim Armes

New member
Well, this one wasn't accidental, however it wasn't done in vain either. I hate seeing myself in photos but I needed one for my web site...

There are loads of things wrong with it, but hey, after 20 minutes of trying to get something half decent I realised that it just wasn't going to happen!


portrait.jpg
 
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